


Visiting Nina

by tortuosity



Series: Every Storm a Serenade [3]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Drama, Exposition, F/F, One Shot, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 01:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18681574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortuosity/pseuds/tortuosity
Summary: Isabela goes to see the infamous “Nina” for herself… and maybe send a message.Takes place some time after Songs of the Pirate Queen's Chapter 11 (Act 1.5: "Never Look Away")





	Visiting Nina

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted to my Tumblr. "Nina" and her relationship to Hawke was first introduced in [this chapter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17621633/chapters/42736658), so this might not make complete sense without it.

“Is Nina free tonight? I heard she’s worth the price,” Isabela says, trying to sound casual, like maybe she isn’t dying of curiosity.

Viveka eyes her the way one eyes an unopened bottle of milk that’s been sitting out in the sun for a few days. “I was wondering when you’d ask for her. Feeling homesick?”

She is prepared for that inevitable comment. “Yes, that’s exactly what I think about when I come to the whorehouse. My _count_ ry,” she says, a tiny smile at the innuendo ruining her attempt at deadpan.

Viveka almost cracks a smile of her own, but quickly buries it as she scratches _“Isabela --- Nina”_ into the book. She knows by now not to ask for Isabela’s last initial, a thing that never existed. “How many hours will you need?”

“Oh, just one. This won’t take long.” If someone would’ve told Isabela when she washed into Kirkwall that she would one day visit a brothel, pay for a whore, and _not_ get any sex out of it, on _purpose,_ she would have laughed in their face. And yet here she is, pressing two gold coins into Viveka’s hand, paying for _talk_ and nothing more.

“I never thought you’d be one to skip the foreplay, but it’s your life.” Waving at the stairs, Viveka is already turning to harangue an unruly patron. “Go on up whenever you like.”

Nina is waiting in the royal suite, where the fur rug is real and the gold leaf on the four-poster bed might be worth something if one scraped it all off. The black hair and tanned skin are a match, but Nina’s face is rounder, her nose more blunt, full lips sporting a silver ring, and her eyes are a deep, warm brown. When she sees Isabela come through the door, those eyes widen, then quickly narrow, surprise replaced with wariness.

 _“Shanearrat, enwan,”_ Nina greets as Isabela closes the door behind her. She stands, but keeps her body angled slightly away, a subtle move, but Isabela takes note of it.

It feels wrong, almost perverse, to hear Rivaini in Kirkwall, like pissing on a chantry wall. “I don’t speak that language anymore. I’ve left that life behind me,” Isabela responds in the King’s Tongue, making no move from the door.

The hard lines ease from Nina’s face, and she turns to address Isabela directly. “As have I,” she says carefully, like stepping around puddles, accent clinging thick to her words. Isabela wonders if that’s what _she_ sounded like, years and years ago, before travel and exposure bent her cadence and pronunciation into conformity. “Where were you born?” Nina asks.

“Afsaana, I think. We moved around a lot. You?” She doesn’t care to hear the answer, but it seems polite to ask.

“Dairsmuid.” Nina spits it like a curse. “I will not go back. Not ever.”

Isabela puts an elbow on the nearby vanity and leans into it, crossing her legs at the ankles. Piecing the bits together—the initially defensive body language, her apparently recent departure, her relative fluency in the King’s Tongue, the anger with which she spoke the name of her home city—Nina was likely an escaped mage from the only Circle in Rivain. And she was prepared for Rivaini Templars to come hunting for her.

But Isabela isn’t here to dig into Nina’s past life. “I want to discuss a particular client of yours. A mutual friend. Named Haw—er, Marian, I guess is what you know her by.” It feels so bizarre to say Hawke’s first name.

“A woman does not kiss and tell,” says Nina, a phrase that conveniently translates from Rivaini to Common directly, but her smile gives her away. “You must be Isabela. Marian has spoken of you before.” She says the name with rounded vowels, emphasis on the last syllable, clipping the “r” sound, and Isabela can’t help but wonder if Hawke likes hearing her name that way.

“When has she spoken of me?” And, more importantly, why would she?

Nina laughs, and it sounds like bells. “I do not know the word in this tongue. How do you say… _ngaale?"_ Her lip ring glistens in the sconcelight.

Isabela breathes in, holds it for a count of three, breathes out. “Orgasm. That’s the word you’re looking for.”

“Orgasm.” Nina tries the word out like a new hat. “It sounds better in Rivaini, no? Now,” she paces in front of the bed, chin in hand, ruminating over some great mystery, “what does Marian have from me that she cannot have from you? Or…” Her head tilts slightly to the side as she turns to stare at Isabela. “Is she afraid?”

“There is _nothing_ she gets from you that she can’t get from me,” Isabela snarls, despite herself.

“Sometimes it is more easy to give the body to a whore than the heart to another. But truth always comes out. _Obi achore madaa achore, enwan._ ”

The heart wants what it wants. Indeed. And this Rivaini whore has gotten the better of her. Isabela had come to the Rose to inform Nina her services with Hawke would no longer be needed. A hollow threat, in truth. It was stupid, she thinks. Is she jealous? Of what? It was _her_ name falling out of Hawke’s lips in her most intimate, vulnerable moments. So why does it feel so terrifying?

“What is your real name?” she asks, if only so she doesn’t have to think about hearts or their wants anymore.

Nina pulls her robe tighter around her, like she has taken a sudden chill. “It does not matter. I am Nina now. As you are Isabela.”

“Yes.” Isabela grabs the door handle to leave, to go drink and stew over the most expensive, frustrating conversation she has ever had, then stops and looks at Nina again—the woman she could have been. “And she… is Hawke.”


End file.
